


This Be The Verse

by NothingEnough



Series: Federation Book Club, TNG Chapter [5]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Android Sexuality, Bullshit Programming, Late Night Conversations, M/M, My First Work in This Fandom, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 17:04:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7810114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingEnough/pseuds/NothingEnough
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Data and Dr. Tainer discuss certain aspects of his programming. (mild Data/Geordi, enough BS about programming to make any experts laugh helplessly at my ignorance. Post-TV series, AU ignoring the existence of the films)</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Be The Verse

“I’ve become a bit of a night-owl,” said Mother.

Data nodded. Changes in circadian rhythms were a commonly observed phenomenon in elderly humans. He suspected stating this fact out loud might be considered socially unacceptable. His head tilted to one side, briefly, as he sought the correct response. “That is perfectly all right,” he said. “I can delay my dream program, if you like, and keep you company.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather get to bed? Geordi will fall asleep soon,” she said. His conversational program was getting quite the workout. He parsed her tone under  _ teasing _ and her facial expression (small smile, ocular wrinkles becoming pronounced) under  _ fond _ . Mother and Geordi had gotten along well so far, but it was only the first of three days of shore leave. “Besides, you don’t have to spend every waking second with me, son. Just because I’m awake doesn’t mean you’ve got to be.”

So many contractions. Data placed no importance on the usage of contractions in his speech, but this was a marker humans considered vital for natural, casual conversation. Were he capable of an emotional reaction, it might be classified  _ envy. _ He was spared the conflict. He answered her with silence, sitting at the smallish, triangular kitchen table, hands folded on the table’s orange-stained wood surface.

He watched her, and after a moment, Mother shrugged, muttered “Suit yourself”, and went back to making tea. The tea leaves produced an odor resulting from a chemical composition similar to Earth’s anise and Vulcan’s clove. She prepared it in a small faceted teapot (approximately 13 centimeters in diameter, each facet varying in size but averaging 3 square centimeters). The glass of the teapot was as orange as the table. In addition to being the most prominent color of the Atrean flag, the compound now used to stain glass and wood used to be the most precious resource on the planet, similar in its social and monetary value to gold. But--

“Do you want anything?”

“I,” Data said, and hesitated. Initially, he intended to suggest he required no nourishment. However, he ended up saying: “I will have some tea.”

She nodded, and her smile connoted  _ pleased _ . It appeared he located the correct reaction. He set a mental alarm to include these successes in his personal log the next time he was on board.

“I’m curious,” she said. Mother reached for a drying-rack constructed to resemble a leafless willow. From it, she drew a glass 9 centimeters in height, composed of the same faceted, orange glass as the teapot, and set it beside the pot. “I thought you were telling me everything in your letters, but when you told me you were bringing Geordi along, I was surprised. Even more so when I realized this was a, a formal introduction to your relationship with him. Are you uncomfortable talking about it?”

“I am not capable of experiencing comfort or discomfort on the subject,” Data said. That pathway was so well-worn through his positronic net that it required no conscious searching.

“Son, you’re too literal for your own good. I know better than anyone other than you what you can and can’t do. But, you may have noticed, human languages are… sticky with emotion. It’s almost impossible to express a thought without using emotionally charged words.”

“I have encountered the issue.”

“You’re not answering.”

Data looked at his own hands. His dermal layer appeared to be in perfect condition. He looked back at Mother. She had one hand on the teapot-lid, and looked over her shoulder directly at him. One eyebrow raised. Neutral set of the mouth.  _ Curious _ . Perhaps with a touch of  _ irritation _ .

“I did not tell you about my relationship with Geordi because,” but why had he not? His master program sensed several subprograms activating at once--conversational, memory core search, modesty--and he let them, as the saying went, fight it out. After a pause of less than one second, he said: “We have both had negative experiences regarding romantic relationships. Those negative experiences were compounded by prematurely discussing how ‘well’ a relationship was going with friends and family. When we began exploring a romantic relationship between us, we agreed to not discuss it until we were certain we were a match. Afterward, I suppose, it became a habit. Did that hurt your feelings?”

“No. Not really. Surprised the hell out of me, like I said, but I wasn’t hurt.”

“Why were you surprised, Mother? You anticipated the activation of my sexuality program when we first met. To be truthful, I had not yet discovered that I possessed a sexuality program before you mentioned it.”

“Because it still hasn’t activated, Data. If it had, you wouldn’t be with Geordi.”

Data performed an act which, as his memory core search reminded him, used to be a very common behavior of his, one which he slowly eliminated as he realized how inhuman it made him appear to the rest of the crew: His head twitched from side to side 5 times. The need to process this information and compare it with previous statements from Mother overwhelmed the conversational program’s dictations regarding his physical behaviors. Finally, he voiced his conclusions of his exhaustive search. “I do not understand.”

Mother poured one glass full of tea. The tea was primarily brown with a few hints of blue swirling in the center. He found the contrast artistically intriguing, and set another alarm, this one reminding him to link back to his memory of this evening and paint the tea-glass. “Well. I’m fairly sure it hasn’t yet. How intimate are the two of you?”

“We engage in activities we refer to as ‘dates’ approximately twice a week,” said Data, “and we engage in sexual activities once a month.”

She coughed. His conversational program chided him. It summoned an audiovisual clip from his memory core of Commander Riker holding both hands in front of his abdominal area and exclaiming  _ TMI, Data! _ . Data did not search further into the memory, wherein the Commander had the sad task of explaining the meaning of the acronym. “I apologize,” Data said immediately. “That was more than you were asking for.”

“I don’t need more details than that,” she admitted. She filled the other glass, then set the teapot back on the handwoven brown heating pad on the countertop. “This is my point, though. You wouldn’t be that close with Geordi if you had your sexuality program on. Noonien wrote it with a particular set of preferences in mind.”

“Preferences?” Perhaps his psychological makeup was closer to human than he had previously understood. In Mother’s presence, he had to actively resist a very old thread of programming which he had long discarded: he nearly prefixed his question with “Query:”. Was he reverting to his own childhood?

She brought the glasses over to the table, and set his before him. Her hands shook somewhat when not engaged in a direct task, but she successfully carried both glasses without spilling a milliliter. He saw his Father’s work in that. He pondered, in the moments before she spoke, if Mother would ever notice the phenomenon.

“Yes. He… well, I hate to speak ill of the dead, and I don’t want you thinking I didn’t love him. But he had a stubborn streak as wide as the Milky Way. He was adamant about giving you a sexuality program. I agreed, at first. I thought it’d be good for you to be able to… the program was meant to contextualize your sensory input and memories regarding romantic and sexual liaisons. It’d give you something approaching a libido, and it--”

“How could it possibly achieve that when I lack the capacity to experience pleasure?”

Mother sat in the chair to Data’s left. She shrugged, raised both eyebrows, and took a long drink of her tea.  _ Embarrassed _ . But also  _ resignation. _ “Libido and pleasure are two separate packages. The short version is, you’ve got an urgency program. Along with the curiosity program, it’s what makes you work. Curiosity drives your programming to seek and analyze new data. Urgency allows your programming to rank events in order of importance. You can’t function without them, since you don’t have emotions to provide you with motivation. The sexuality program, that hooks into your urgency program--and on randomized cycles, it instructs your main and social programs to treat the pursuit and acquirement of sex as important.”

Data picked up his own glass of tea. The glass was 40 degrees after absorbing the heat from the tea; he estimated that this particular tea must have a lower temperature requirement for infusion. The flavor, primarily, was of licorice. “I find all of this fascinating, and certainly, it is relevant to my life experiences. However, it does not answer my question.”

“Maybe you get it from me.” He failed to process what this statement could refer to, and discarded it. “Okay. Noonien thought the program ought to have guidelines. Preferences for, that is, if--if you were to look for a partner, you’d already know what to look for. I agreed with reservations. Then I double-checked his coding before he installed it, and I almost threw my pad at him, I was so mad.”

“For what reason?”

“He just stuck his own preferences in there, that’s for what reason! He--he had everything modeled on himself,  _ again _ . If Noonien had his way, you’d be out there looking for a blonde human woman with pale or olive skin, no more than 1.7 meters in height, weight unimportant, between the ages of 20 to 25, with an interest in STEM and a ‘strong-willed’ personality. Just his type.”

Data processed the potential implications of this statement. His immediate reaction: “Geordi is an engineer.”

Mother laughed. He puzzled briefly over her laughter, until his conversational program labeled it  _ good-natured _ , rather than  _ taunting _ . “He does have that going for him.”

“Mother, if I understand you correctly,” he said, and as was sometimes the case in social interaction, he was not entirely certain of what he would say before he uttered it. He took another drink. The flavor was somewhat mild, but the strong odor made it seem as strong as coffee. “There is a possibility that this program may activate in the future, is there not?”

“There is. It’s like your dream programming. It’s in your head, waiting for you to reach the right level of complexity.”

“Upon its activation, I will no longer be interested in pursuing a romantic relationship with Geordi.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. The conflict between your memories of Geordi and the new program might create a temporary system failure. Or a cascade failure. Or you might lose all interest in Geordi. Or, well, I don’t know.”

“Is it possible to prevent its activation?”

“I don’t know that either, Data. Listen, I can write and edit code, that’s mostly what I helped your father with. But the interaction of all those programs running in your neural net, that’s his design, and I suppose its secrets died with him.”

Data considered the entirety of the information presented to him. He watched Mother hold her glass in both hands, press it to her lips, and drink. “Mother, I am uncertain of how to formulate a reply without utilizing language which is emotionally charged. Will you forgive my imprecision?”

“Of course, darling.”

“This is unacceptable. I comprehend that Father believed he was doing what was best for me. I comprehend that he believed he was immortalizing you, by encouraging me to seek a mate who would emulate you in several respects. However, my first sexual experience was with a woman who, while fitting several of the physical parameters of the program, would not fit it entirely. It is extremely important that I not lose the connection I experienced with her to a new program which might deem it unimportant. Furthermore, my relationship with Geordi is non-negotiable. I… am… in a state… which could be considered analogous to happiness. I do not want to break his heart. And I certainly do not want to deactivate due to a cascade failure.”

Several key muscles in her facial structure flexed, causing her mouth to express a frown. Her eyes narrowed. A liquid sheen generated over her eyes. She was near tears. “I’m sorry. I don’t--”

“If you can explain to me the manner in which this program will activate, perhaps it can be rewritten.”

“How do…” And while Mother must never know it, the Soong-type neural net behind her tearful face went into overdrive. The solution struck her almost immediately. She set the glass down. He noted that the tea turned a deeper shade of navy as it cooled. “Of course. Rewrite it. That’s it. Perfect. Just change the parameters of its activation.”

“If you--”

“Listen, your subprograms all activate using the same process, that much I know. First, the subprogram accesses the central program and gains permission to access particular sets of sensory input. Then the subprogram rewrites permissions for other subprograms to accommodate itself. Then it accesses your memory core and your urgency program.”

“Explain the reason behind this process.”

“The first time someone ever aimed a phaser at you,” she said, and Data thought this was the side of her that Father fell in love with: the intensity of her light eyes despite the microscopic teardrops fanned over her eyelashes, the firm line between her eyebrows which he identified as  _ determined _ . “Your main program had a directive to activate your self-defense subprogram. The subprogram accessed your sensory inputs--your visual data, for instance--and used that to determine the danger you were in. Then it blocked access for the curiosity program’s activation in that single instance, because the conflict could lead to your death. Then it ran its actual subroutines allowing you to defend yourself. After the danger passed, it accessed your memory core so it could index similar instances when your life was in danger, allowing it to react more quickly in the future, and it hooked into the urgency program so that you could more accurately judge the most important action to take.”

“That does sound like a reasonable approach.”

“And that’s what your sexuality program will do. But we can--”

“Alter the order,” they said at the same moment. Mother smiled.

“Let it access your memories first,” she said.

“I also suggest that we rewrite it to guide my preferences based upon my memories, assuming the pre-programmed preferences cannot be eliminated.”

“By George, I think we’ve got it,” she said.

Data briefly searched the reference. He half-spoke, half-sang: “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.”

“Good boy. You know your classics.” She looked down at her glass, now full of a midnight-blue liquid. She quaffed it in a single swallow, and winced. He mimicked her behavior, which appeared to please her. “I’m not so much a night-owl that I could start in on that tonight. And I don’t have a computer powerful enough to handle access to your positronic net.”

“You could accompany us to the Enterprise.”

“We’ll talk it out tomorrow.” Mother suppressed a yawn behind the heel of her right hand. “All this coding chatter is wearing me out, and I’m sure my husband misses me. Geordi probably misses you, too. Tomorrow?”

***

There was a single guest-room in their home, furnished with, among other expected objects, two beds. During the welcome-home tour, Mother had casually explained that they were free to push the beds together if they preferred. Geordi had giggled, rubbed the back of his neck with his left hand, shrugged, and mumbled “Thanks, Doctor”, because Geordi struggled with social anxiety.

Data stood by one of the beds. Geordi had not pushed them together. He had been too tired to do anything but lie on top of the sheets and fall asleep. He still wore his VISOR, as well as the same clothes he had dressed in at 0530 hours the previous morning. He lay supine. His mouth was slightly open.

Data watched him for a few seconds--for him, an eternity of information--and pondered. Were they unsuccessful in rewriting the sexuality program, he could lose Geordi. Not only that, but he would be untroubled by the loss--and not, as was usual, due to his inability to feel untroubled. The dream program, which seemed to provide him a rudimentary imagination during what his chronometer determined to be night-time, provided him with an image of a round, metal bomb with a digital timer counting down in a numerical system he could not understand.

Data’s memory core activated. He recalled the first time he ever saw Geordi. Over the next nineteen seconds, he reviewed every interaction they had engaged in, every conversation they had shared, every instance where Data thought of Geordi in his absence. He calculated that this constituted three years’ worth of memory (now three years and ten seconds, now eleven). 

Data felt his eyebrow cock. He uttered a “hm”. (Did he “get that” from Mother?) He climbed into the bed beside Geordi, although he barely fit. He felt Geordi jump. He was probably having a nightmare. The VISOR continued to impart visual information while Geordi slept, and the rush of input sometimes gave him nightmares.

“‘zat you?”

“Yes,” Data said. He rested a hand on Geordi’s shoulder, and gently pushed him from supine to lying on his side. Geordi was too sleepy to question his actions yet. He then lay so that his body pressed close to Geordi’s, his chest against Geordi’s shoulderblades, hips lined up perfectly. Their feet tangled together. His social program suggested that he wrap his left arm around Geordi, and allow his hand to rest near the center of his chest, and Data complied.

“... what’d I do right?”

“I do not understand your meaning.”

“You never spoon me. You feeling okay, Data?”

“I am fine. Please go back to sleep. I will activate my dream program shortly.”

Geordi smiled. Data set one final mental alarm: when he returned to the ship and began painting again, before he painted the teacup, he must paint Geordi’s smile.

Data held him for 2 hours and 13 minutes, noting the precise temperature of his body, the tone of his voice as he grumbled in his sleep, his scent, the texture of his hair, and then, as though reluctant, he activated the dream program.

He dreamt he was a bird again. A bird in a cage.

-end-


End file.
